Maths for a 6yr old

powie69

www.subtangent.com

My DS (aged 3) loves playing countdown on here and other fun things to do with maths that may be applicable to you.

andyrules

Hobo
You are right - if she's struggling you CAN help, but not necessarily with worksheets - sounds like she could already be a bit 'turned off' maths.

make an appointment to see her teacher - don't just turn up, you'll get longer and they'll take you seriously. Honestly, the school WILL be interested, it doesn't matter if they have other children. I'm sure her teacher will already be aware of any difficulties. If it's basic tables etc, you can help with games. I can't stress how important tables are to everything else they do.

You must find out the areas where she needs help before you can reasonably take any action.

First, how old is she?

chocaholic110

I would agree on not giving worksheets. I very rarely ever use them except when I'm setting homework.
The Coxhoe Primary school website has some excellent links on a range of maths topics (and other topics too). The children in my class often access sites we have used at school when they go home.
It is highly likely that you are teaching a method not taught at school. Children in my class often announce their parent (usually their Dad) has taught them an easy way to subtract. They then go onto show me
eg 72-27 is 70-20 and 7 - 2 while I mentally sob!
Check whether she knows her basic number facts by heart eg number bonds to 10 / 20 etc, doubles, halves, addition and subtraction facts that total numbers up to 20, tables etc
I'm sure that her teacher would be interested - it makes life easier when parents are willing to consolidate work at home, as long as they aren't teaching in an entirely different way!
Also encourage her to discuss her methods and to use the facts that she already knows to make her calculations easier eg knowing 17-4 because she knows 7-4. Often children of that age can work out the answer but struggle to explain how they know.
Other than that I agree to make it practical - teach her when she doesn't even know she's being taught - weighing when you bake, talking about weights or prices in the supermarket, working out how to share sweets etc between friends, cutting things into halves / quarters, play with different size containers in the bath (how many of these smaller bottles fill this large one? etc)
Above all, remember she's six. School is important but not the be all and end all of everything. She might just be too tired to properly concentrate once she has been at school all day. Don't push it if she's not interested

alwaysonthego_2

hobo28 wrote:

Also, any ideas on how to teach them? I really struggled last night to help explain how to subtract big numbers in a way she can understand. I'm a useless teacher!

I do work experience in a school ages 5-6 years (before I go and do a teaching degree). In the class they are taught to subtract by counting the big number on their fingers and taking away the other number. I found that they seem to grasp it better, if you pretended that it was sweets that they were eating i.e 4-2, so I would say to them imagine you had 4 sweets and ate 2 of them, for some reason it worked for me.

bunty109

http://www.primarygames.co.uk/ is one my daughter's school recommends.

My advice would be to ask your child's teacher at parents evening about what to do and also about how to help. Our daughter's school runs an evening where they explain how maths is taught now. It is taught very much with a view to getting strong mental arithmetic. There are occasions where we've struggled with the way things are being taught so the maths evening was really good.

I'm still trying to grasp what "chunking" is!!!

Fizog

I found my (now 12 year old) son learnt to sort problems in his head. Only in year 4 did they actually write sums in columns as we used to do. The umbrella method of long division had me completely confused till I sought help on BBC site. I just kept abreast of my eldest GCSE maths and he passed so I must be doing something right. Help your step daughter by bringing maths into everyday life as others have suggested... best way of getting mine to concentrate was to take them to the sweet shop on Saturday with their pocket money and tell them to chose penny sweets and chocolate no more than 75p and IF they choose say 58p worth sweets and the cost is excactly 58p you will foot the bill!!! I'ts amazing how accurate they get. ( Thank you Mrs Patel of Hunters who does this with lots of local children ) Lucky little girl to have someone who cares enough to help her out, I work in a secondary school and I deal with 15 year olds who can't figure out 1/4 of 400g flour. Repetition games rather than sitting down and working on paper is best to engage I reckon.